Stop AI Hallucinations on Your Site

When a visitor asks something simple and your chatbot invents an answer, it’s not just awkward—it’s a brand risk. If you manage multiple sites or clients, you need answers that are correct, sourced, and aligned with your policies. The good news: you don’t need to code anything to get there.

This guide shows how to set up a source‑verified assistant that prioritizes accuracy, cites where answers come from, and gracefully falls back to a human when confidence is low. We’ll keep it practical and doable in an afternoon.

How AI (and Seekdown) Solves It

1. Unify every product source. Seekdown ingests websites, catalogs, PDFs, and APIs into governed collections so answers stay scoped to the facts you trust.
2. Serve strict, cited responses. Retrieval, summarization, and tone controls ensure every AI answer cites the right SKU page or spec sheet—no hallucinations.
3. Guide conversions automatically. Intent-aware starters and CTAs route shoppers to quotes, carts, or humans the moment confidence dips.
4. Measure and improve. Built-in analytics expose intent coverage, low-confidence gaps, and assisted revenue so you can prove ROI and iterate weekly.

What’s really going wrong

Most generic chatbots try to “be helpful” even when they don’t know. That means:

• Confident, incorrect answers without any source.
• Inconsistent tone across pages, products, or brands.
• Replies that mix outdated PDFs with new content—or ignore your latest update.
• No clear handoff when the answer is uncertain.

For webmasters and digital leads, the result is more tickets, lost trust, and a never‑ending game of whack‑a‑mole. You need a system that respects your content boundaries and proves every claim.

How AI (and Seekdown) fixes it

Seekdown lets you create an assistant that learns from your actual sources—your website, PDFs, product catalogs, and docs—then answers within that knowledge. The assistant can be configured to:

• Only answer from indexed sources and show citations.
• Respect strict policies (for scope, tone, and disclaimers).
• Filter by collections (e.g., “Only product manuals + size charts”).
• Control context size so answers stay precise and fast.
• Fall back to a safe message or a contact form when confidence is low.

The result is a trustworthy assistant that reduces noise, builds confidence, and keeps people on your site.

A step‑by‑step policy playbook

You can adapt these steps to one or many sites. The goal is simple: source‑verified answers with predictable behavior.

1) Curate your sources into collections

• Group content by purpose, like “Product Manuals,” “FAQs,” “Policies,” “Pricing,” or “Blog.”
• Keep catalogs, spec sheets, and documentation structured (PDFs are fine; the key is to keep versions and duplicates under control).
• Give each collection a clear name so you can target it in rules later.

Why it matters: citations should point to the right place, not an outdated PDF. Collections make that easy.

2) Set strict answer behavior

• Configure your assistant to answer only when matching content exists in your collections.
• Require citations for claims, numbers, compatibilities, and comparisons.
• Prefer concise answers with a “Show sources” link or inline citations.

Sample instruction (human‑readable):

> “Answer only using the provided collections. If you’re not confident or the answer isn’t in the sources, say so and suggest how to proceed. Keep a helpful, professional tone and include citations for any factual claims.”

3) Limit scope with collection filters

• Tie the assistant to the collections that matter for each site or page. For example, on a product category page, restrict to “Catalog + Size Guides,” not the entire site.
• For internal use (e.g., employee onboarding), restrict to private collections.

This is the easiest way to avoid off‑topic answers.

4) Tune context and confidence

• Keep context tight so responses don’t wander. If your platform lets you limit retrieved chunks or results, set a sensible cap (e.g., 5–8 relevant passages).
• If confidence is low, don’t force an answer. Offer a clear fallback (see next step).

This balances precision and coverage without slowing things down.

5) Design a safe fallback

• For low‑confidence queries, reply with a short message like: “I’m not fully confident in the result from our sources. Would you like me to open a contact form or point you to the right page?”
• Offer options: open a lead form, link to a help article, or route to support.
• Log these events so you can improve coverage later.

6) Align tone and policy

• Define brand voice: friendly, concise, helpful. Avoid fluff.
• Add do‑not‑answer topics (pricing exceptions, legal advice, roadmap, PII) and standard disclaimers where applicable.
• Keep translations consistent if you operate in multiple languages.

7) Test with real questions (and A/B precision vs. coverage)

• Take the last 50 queries from search/support and test them in the assistant playground.
• Mark each result: “correct + cited,” “partially correct,” or “uncertain.”
• Try a stricter vs. a looser configuration for one week each and compare: accuracy, time‑to‑answer, and deflection.

8) Monitor and iterate

• Track intents, deflected tickets, and satisfaction.
• Identify common low‑confidence queries and ingest the missing pages, PDFs, or tables.
• Update hints (suggested questions) to guide users into the assistant’s sweet spot.

A simple scenario: product compatibility done right

Imagine a store selling small appliances. Visitors constantly ask, “Is Filter X compatible with Model Y?”

• Collections: “Catalog,” “Compatibility Tables,” and “FAQs.”
• Policy: “Only answer compatibility questions using Catalog or Tables; always cite the source.”
• Behavior: If the model isn’t found or confidence is low, the assistant offers a short form: “Share your model number and email so we can confirm.”

Outcome: fewer tickets, fewer returns, and customers who trust the answer because it links to the exact table row.

Benefits at a glance

• Source‑verified answers with transparent citations.
• Fewer errors, less risk, and faster resolution.
• Cleaner UX: focused scope and predictable behavior.
• Time savings for your team (and better CSAT).
• Easy to roll out across multiple sites without code.

Practical tips that pay off

• Keep a “What’s new” collection for recently updated policies or specs; it helps the assistant prefer fresh content.
• For PDFs with tables, ingest the table data so the assistant can answer with structure (not screenshots).
• Use hints like “Compare Model A vs. B” or “Shipping to Spain” to reduce ambiguous queries.
• When in doubt, be conservative: it’s better to ask for context or open a contact form than to guess.

Ready to make your site safer and smarter?

If you’re juggling multiple sites or catalogs, strict policies and citations are the shortest path to reliable AI. You’ll ship faster, sleep better, and your visitors will actually trust the answers.

Discover how Seekdown can help you launch a source‑verified assistant—without code, in hours, and ready to scale across your sites.

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Keywords: AI assistant with citations, strict mode, source‑verified answers, no hallucinations, AI governance, response quality, collection filters, fallback to human.

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